Adirondack Mountains, New York
Summer of 1855
It amazedme that even with my face covered, there was a desire within me to cloak my emotions, hide my strangeness, and push away all the things I was capable of. After so long, this desire had become a part of me, much like the grain sack had—like an organ I could not survive without. It was the only thing that kept me human.
Chayton’s pet never returned. I hadn’t told anyone about the dog resurrecting from the dead. If Chayton or anyone else found out what I had done, they would surely think of me as something of the supernatural. A reason to take my life, or perhaps Mother’s for birthing such a thing.
A complete moon cycle had passed since the strange event, and the parody of my mask had only worsened. Compared to the other tribes I’d stayed with, the people here were quite different.
Here, they negotiated with settlers, exchanged land and weaponry, took the gods for granted, and glorified a man though they promised to worship the sun. I noticed a change in Mother and how she routinelyshooedme out of the hogan during the night as English men came and went. This tribe was splintering, fading, and falling apart, and my plan was to take her away from here and leave at sunrise before leaving turned difficult.
I sat beside a blazing fire, drawing the same face that had always haunted me. Full, youthful lips that were familiar to me. Feline eyes I’d become intimate with. Every empty space was filled with delicate jawlines, lashes, and cheekbones I’d never touched yet somehow known—a collection of a girl who lived in my mind and my mind alone.
I would often find myself stuck in the details, overcritical of my drawing because no matter how many times I drew the face, something was amiss.
A freckle. A dimple. A wrinkle.
Her face was too perfect for the likes of a monster.
Around me, elderly men smoked tobacco from wooden pipes as I waited for the English settler to exit my hogan. It was what nighttime was for, Mother had once said, in fear of shaming the sun. If one were to fuck during the day, it would give the impressionI love thee more than the light of the sun,and the sun was supposed to come before all. In this tribe, however, Chief Etu and his brother, Bly, were revered as gods.
I had thought about asking Chayton to come with us. He hadn’t spoken to me since that night, but if he let me, I could teach him how to hunt, read, and speak other languages, among other things. I could protect him from his tyrannical father until he could learn to protect himself. In return, he could be my brother.
I had brought the idea to Mother, but she was against the idea.
“A boy stays with his tribe,”she had said.
“Then I should find a tribe to belong to as well.”
“You do not belong to a tribe, my son. You belong to the trees. You belong to the earth. You do not need anything more.”
The flames licked my ankles, and I wondered what it would feel like if I lay upon the fire. If it burned me up until I turned to soot and absorbed into the earth—the place she had said I belonged. It seemed like an eternal paradise for a monster. A coffin made of sticks and stones for broken souls, allowing the elements to take me.Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
It was the first time I thought about disappearing.
Perhaps here was where hope was born, a dreamt-up reason to go on when all the real reasons were gone.
All I had left was the face I drew and the spiders, with their skittering legs like whispers speaking to me in a way that said tohold onand thatthe time was almost here. So, I pulled back my leg, and a burn in the shape of a web blistered across my ankle bone.
Moments later, a distant scream floated upon the leaves, bolted across swaying branches, and stabbed the night surrounding me. I cocked my head to the sound, not surprised no one else heard it. Most were in their hogan for the night. The rest were naïve to what the earth was trying to tell them.
I walked to the hogan the sound had come from, leaves crunching beneath my moccasins on the far side of the land. A nightly summer wind ruffled a cloth curtain hanging from a carved-out window. My ears were filled with the pulse of my heart as I peered in.
A flame lit from a single wick glinted off William’s face.
He had a young, spirited woman on the dirt-covered floor. Both her wrists were bound by one of his hands, his other palm clasped forcefully against her mouth. Her clothes were torn, dirt stained her skin. Tears shot down her frightened eyes and sliced her cheeks as he forced himself onto her.
William managed to pry her legs open with his, and he jolted his hips forward until his manhood disappeared inside of her.
In a brutal instant, they were connected.
Two people joined in an act I’d only read about.
I’d never witnessed fucking. Most tribes I’d crossed hardly allowed anyone to speak of the act. We were told boys succumbed to urges; men controlled them. I’d been able to control them as well until this moment.
Not due to a lack of interest. I’d often wondered what it would have been like each time I drew the pair of eyes imprinted in my mind. But with every face I’d crossed, I’d never found the woman in my drawings. The one worth risking everything to speak to.
But the longing, the scene playing out before me, and the lust-filled appetite snaking inside me made my cock come alive in a way that it hadn’t before. I didn’t have to peer down to feel the tightening of my testicles, the stiffness of my manhood, the friction against my trousers. The desire to be connected with someone as well.
